Such irresponsibility necessarily implies a sacrifice of individual intellectual and moral interests to individual and popular economic interests.

It could not persist except by virtue of intellectual and moral conformity.

The American intellectual habit has on the whole been just about as vigorous and independent as that of the domestic animals.
The freedom of opinion of which we boast has consisted for the most part in uttering acceptable commonplaces with as much defiant conviction as if we were uttering the most daring and sublimest heresies.

In making this parade of the uniform of intellectual independence, the American is not consciously insincere.

He is prepared to do battle for his convictions, but his really fundamental convictions he shares with everybody else.